


tape balls: the only universal constant

by bluejaywinger80



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Gen, Loud Boi, rating only for language and gross violence against plywood, the tech theater au you didn't know you needed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 22:58:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17455883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluejaywinger80/pseuds/bluejaywinger80
Summary: If it wasn’t for the blue light attached to the air duct behind them, no one could have seen the three boys sitting in a backstage alcove on folding chairs. They’re clad in all black, and slumped over, exhausted. The one in the middle limply reaches over to grab some candy from the bag perched on a monitor speaker beside him.(the 2017-18 tampa bay lightning high school theater tech au)





	tape balls: the only universal constant

If it wasn’t for the blue light attached to the air duct behind them, no one could have seen the three boys sitting in a backstage alcove on folding chairs. They’re clad in all black, and slumped over, exhausted. The one in the middle limply reaches over to grab some candy from the bag perched on a monitor speaker beside him. 

"Well that was a nightmare," Tyler says. 

"My arms are dead," Alex moans. "I cannot _believe_ the hydraulic pump broke."

"Well, we'll have to get Ceddy to fix it," Ondrej says. 

"Actually, Slater made that one," Alex says. "Ask him."

"Some of the actors walked away with lavs," Tyler says. "We should probably go get those."

The three sigh in unison, then stand. 

"Pump?" Alex says. 

"Stair units," Tyler sighs. 

"Lavs," Ondrej says, and the three disperse. 

Ondrej makes his way down the backstage hallway, past bags left unattended and props not in their designated locations. He doesn’t give a shit at this point. Stammer can yell at the actors later; that is, after all, the second most important part of the stage manager’s job. 

Tyler retrieves some foam glue from the shop, and returns to the overturned stairs, sitting on the stage in front of an empty theater. With a pile of detached sliding panels next to him, he begins to reattach them so that the stairs can slide across the stage smoothly once more.

Alex stares despondently at the hydraulic pump that failed him and everyone else during the show. Of all the times to start leaking, it has to go when the actress playing the main villain is _standing_ on the trapdoor it supports, and Alex is the unfortunate soul beneath waiting to pick up the slack. 

Ondrej weaves through the crowd of people in the theater’s lobby, looking for three specific actors in a sea of people. He’s only slightly self-conscious of his baggy black cargo pants and well-worn hoodie as he dodges the audience members in their nice outfits and actors in full costume mingling with their families and friends. Spotting one, he swoops in. 

She’s talking to her parents, and Ondrej hates to interrupt, but he calmly clears his throat and asks her if he can have her mic. She apologizes, and hands it to him after untangling it from her costume. _One down,_ Ondrej thinks. _Hopefully this won’t happen tomorrow._

Tyler allows the stairs to sit bottom-side up, glue drying. He moves them underneath the scaffolding of the set and begins sweeping the green feathers off the stage, shed from the feather boas Cally or Dan felt were necessary to add to the costumes in act 2. Hopefully the stairs won’t cause any more problems.

Alex notifies Slater of the pump’s failure and extricates a promise to fix it, and begins cleaning up backstage. He tracks down the smoke machine’s remote (lost again), and turns it off, giving the geyser a gentle pat on its casing for a job mostly well-done. As Ondrej returns with the lost lav mics, Alex helps him turn them off and makes sure all the facetape is present and accounted for. Hopefully none of the set will have unexpected malfunctions on night two.

_Hopefully._ Famous last words, right?

***

The next day, the three of them sit on the edge of the stage with Andrej and Yanni, feet dangling into the orchestra pit. They can see Brayden and Cory clambering into their spotlight booths, and Yanni wonders what wealth of snacks they’ve secreted away for themselves up there. He’s heard legendary stories from Alex of the best snack hoards on the tech crew, and one of Brayden’s had been the winner. 

_“It was the craziest fucking thing I’d ever seen, Yanni,” Alex enthused, gesticulating wildly. “It was one show, dude. One fucking night’s hoard. Six bags of chips, I shit you not. Cheetos, Lays,_ three _bags of Doritos, and some Fritos as well. He also had like two bags of the Little Debbie bite-sized brownie type shit?”_

_“That sounds like a lot,” Andrej said, sounding faintly disgusted but more impressed._

_“It’s true, I almost raided his stash myself,” Ondrej said. “The Cheetos were calling my name, but I decided we had enough candy backstage.”_

_“Get to the good part, Killer,” Tyler said._

_“That’s not_ all?” _Yanni blurted out, shocked._

_“Nope,” Alex said smugly. “He also had a slice of pizza and a cup of fucking_ soup, _which, please believe me, he dipped the pizza in. It was chicken noodle, too! Oh, and I almost forgot the sub sandwich! That was pretty much it, but no one’s ever hoarded more that I’ve seen.”_

_“Bullshit,” Andrej said._

_“I have photographic evidence of the pizza thing, dude,” Alex said, and began frantically scrolling through his phone. “There.”_

_Everyone crowded around the screen to see a photo of a slice of pizza sitting in a cup of soup, poorly lit and with the harsh glare of a cell phone flash. It checked out, clearly perched on the edge of the spotlight nook, and Alex felt he’d suitably impressed the new technicians._

On the other side of the stage sits the rail crew, discussing the complicated cues they’ll be dealing with. Andrei, Vladdy, and Mikhail seem to be talking about the flying cage they’ll be lifting for the second night— with an actor inside. 

Victor and Nikita are hanging out by the boards, ready to do mic and cue checks once Notes is over. They can’t do much at the moment, as the play’s director’s giving notes to the actors while Stammer waits patiently to chip in himself. 

Alex hopes he’ll mention the issues with stray props and costumes. He doesn’t want to navigate that, and Andrej and Yanni are getting sick of cleaning it up after each and every rehearsal and show. Steven doesn’t say anything about the jumpsuits scattered offstage during the final music number, and Alex idly realizes he and Ondrej always cleaned it up without mentioning it to anyone. 

The show must go on, and as the actors leave to get ready and the band begins tuning in the pit, the tech crew begins readying the theater for the opening of the house. Tyler walks out onto the stage and rights the stairs, pushing them into place for the top of show. Ondrej turns on his smoke machine and tests it, smiling at the black box with its tubes. The night before, he’d affectionately dubbed it “Loud Boi”. Andrej begins turning on all of the lav mics, and Yanni consults the sheet to see which actors need to report to claim theirs. 

Alex carries the mics one by one out onto the stage to test them, watching for Victor’s thumbs up from the soundboard. “Testing testing, one, two, mic number… six? I dunno.”

Nikita strobes the stage lights at him, testing the lightning effects from the storm scene. Alex could swear he’d already tested them. Maybe he’ll tell a joke for number seven.

Maia, the actress who plays Dorothy, makes her way across the stage as Alex fumbles his way through a joke Andrej told him once about philosophy and the cart before the horse. Stage right, Vladdy hears Nikita boo and yell something uncomplimentary about it from the board, but turns his attention to the cables he’s checking that’ll hold up Maia in her fly harness. Andrei beside him clips her harness to the lines, and she steps away to where she’ll take off from.

_“Go ahead when she’s ready,”_ Andrei says in Russian to Mikhail, who’s standing by to pull the lines. Maia gives the thumbs up, and three Russians jump into action. 

The fourth is on his phone at the booth when it happens. Over the headsets Nikita hears: “She’s caught on the electrics--” 

And a bloodcurdling scream pierces the theater. Everyone jumps. “Ohmygod shitshitshitfuck--” Steven swears violently beside him, and a shout of “БЛЯДЬ, ублюдок,” comes from backstage. It sounds like Vladdy. Nikita silently echoes the sentiment. 

But nothing awful happens. 

Word gets around quickly-- Maia was told by the director to rehearse her stage screams; to channel the fear of Dorothy in the tornado. “Couldn’t somebody have _warned_ us?” Steven rants loudly. “I thought she was _dying_ or something.”

From where Tyler is making taller people (read: the Czechs) mic up the actors backstage, he shakes his head and silently agrees. 

Yanni ducks his head backstage from the coves. “Um, Tyler, Steven told me to tell you that there’s a food prop now and we need to keep it hidden until Juliana comes to collect it for the Oz scene in act 2.” He holds out a bag of green cotton candy. ‘Here it is.” 

“Put it by our candy,” Tyler says. “We gotta let Alex know too, he’s on headset.” 

Yanni nods and scampers off, leaving the cotton candy on a folding chair. Ondrej sighs loudly as he tears a piece of facetape from the roll to hand it to an actor. “I hate food props,” he groans.

“Amen to that, bro,” Tyler says.

As the house opens, five technicians stand side by side in their darkened space, lit by soft blues, relishing the dark. It’s organized and mostly clean, swept twice over and clear of stray feathers and candy wrappers. It’s time for the second show, and nothing is going to go wrong.

By the end, there’s already been two major malfunctions. 

Apparently the stairs have been taking significant wear and tear in their sliding around, and someone’s going to have to take up Ceddy’s favorite socket wrench and tighten all the bolts before the stairs shake themselves apart under the stress. But intermission doesn’t afford them the time, and they can only pray the increasingly rickety steps can survive one more hour. Yanni and Ondrej are extra gentle with them when they shove them around between scenes.

In the second act, the most obvious possible disaster happens. The scaffolding set, lined with lights, glows red in the Wicked Witch’s lair but turns green in Oz, and something glitches in the electrics. Half the lights refuse to change color, and the clashing red and green halfs are vaguely reminiscent of December but not at all appropriate here. Tyler knows it’s down to him to fix it at first opportunity. He’ll need time and a lowered curtain, though, so it’s Christmastime come early for a while before Nikita takes pity and turns them off entirely. 

At least the final musical numbers are fantastic, as per usual. Sarah’s a goddamn star.

Afterward as Ondrej goes to track down actors _again_ and Andrej searches for Ceddy’s tools, Tyler is repairing the lights and lets out an exultant whoop when Nikita turns them back on and they’re all green. “Switch ‘em again?” Tyler calls. He watches, delighted, as the lights fade from Emerald City to Yellow Brick Road. 

The lights switch off; next Tyler turns off Loud Boi the smoke machine and goes to help Alex and Yanni with their lav struggles. As they turn them off one by one, organizing and accounting for the temporarily missing, Yanni turns to the others. “I know I’m kinda new, but are plays _always_ this chaotic?”

“It could be worse,” Tyler said. “There could be more food props.”

“Remember that one time last year Ondrej put down a set piece off spike and the curtain came down on top of it?” Alex says. “Can’t get too much worse.”

“We agreed never to speak of that again, Alex,” Ondrej says cheerily, suddenly appearing through the curtain. “Mics number one, five, and six returned safe and sound.”

“Thank you Ondrej,” Alex says. “Two shows down, one to go, eh?”

Yanni sighs, and puts more batteries in the designated battery pocket.

***

On a Saturday afternoon actors and technicians alike are at the Am two hours before showtime. Brayden sits in his spotlight booth, looking down on people walking in and out of the theater with his shoes hovering over their heads. He sees Victor on his phone at the booth and swivels, standing, aiming the spotlight directly at the sound tech. He switches it on.

Victor is just reading a text from Steven when a glare appears on the screen and he feels a warmth on his back. He turns, seeing Brayden giggling at him from behind a very bright spot. 

He resists the urge to flip Brayden the bird. _If you don’t get that out of my face, I swear to fuck…_

He gives Brayden his best glare and wishes Nikita was there to do the same. Brayden flashes the light a little bit more, but Victor turns and ignores it, only basking in the warmth a little bit. He refused to give Brayden even that slight little bit of victory. 

Getting bored, Brayden turns the spotlight away from him, and Victor briefly misses it before stamping down the feeling in favor of satisfaction. It’s almost showtime; there are mics to be checked. Alex walks out onto the stage holding the first pack, face beaming with the goofy grin of someone about to drop a terrible joke, and Victor rolls his eyes and turns on mic number one.

“Check, check, one two… why did the chicken cross the road?” Alex says.

Nikita slides into the chair next to Victor, rolling his eyes already. “Ready?” Nikita says.

“More than,” Victor says.

Before long the stage is clear-swept and dimmed while the seats of the house are brightly illuminated and slowly filled by the theatergoers who’ve come for the final show.

Backstage Tyler is mildly concerned with the number of Cheetos Ondrej’s eaten already. Two bags gone before the show even starts, but at least the communal candy stash hasn’t yet dwindled to nothing. It looks like there’ll still be chocolate by the time strike’s over.

Andrej strolls over, looking out at the scaffolding on the stage. “You know there’s two more smoke machines up there,” he says.

“Yeah?” Ondrej says, licking a speck of orange dust off his finger. 

“So what are they called?” Andrej asks. “Yours is Loud Boi, Pally, but the others?”

“The Fire Bois,” Tyler says, looking with reverence at the smoke machines on the scaffold. 

“Is the one on the grid Water Boi?” Andrej asks, tossing the tape at Tyler. 

Alex appears behind Andrej. “Adam Sandler.”

“Why,” Ondrej demands at the same time Tyler says _“Yes.”_

Andrej dissolves into quiet giggles at their reactions, and Tyler has to stifle his own laughter at that. Steven walks through, having called places backstage, and stops to stare at them. “Do I want to know?” he asks.

“Adam Sandler,” Alex says, deadpan, and then breaks, laughing alongside Tyler and Andrej. 

Ondrej stares Steven dead in the face. “They named the geyser above the throne.”

Steven sighs heavily and walks away into the alcove. Turning around, he sticks his head back into stage left: “By the way, we’re at places.”

“Thanks, Steven!” Tyler calls in a stage whisper, and opens up another piece of candy.

Moving to places, the three actors in the opening scene trickle into their space, one by one. Mark, one of the ensemble actors, wanders in holding the dog that plays Toto. Yanni waves at the little guy. The dog acknowledges his presence with a slight turn of the head. Yanni leans excitedly into Alex and whispers to him, “The puppy saw me!”

Mark walks over to stand next to Yanni. “Wanna pet him?”

Yanni’s face screams _‘oh boy do I’_ and he reaches out an enthusiastic hand to pat the puppy’s head. 

Andrej’s hand beside him twitches, resisting the urge to pat Yanni on the head. The dog, hovering in the air in Mark’s arms, tries to grab hold of Andrej’s headset but he jerks back at the last second. “Not today, little guy,” Andrej says to the pup. 

The house lights dim, the band kids in the pit begin playing the opening music, and as the song plays Andrej is given his cue through the headset: “Send Aunt Em out, go,” Steven says. 

Andrej tells Xarria to go, and she strides out onto the stage to start the show. The Wiz, night three, is underway.

An hour later it’s intermission and the crew’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Nothing disastrous has happened yet. In fact, the show has run flawlessly. All of the actors have been in the right places, the stairs remain solid; even the semi-reliable Loud Boi performs excellently and perfectly on cue (under Ondrej’s direction, of course.) 

In the fifteen minutes the audience has to relax before the second half, the five stagehands come together in a loose circle. 

“Lavs?” Alex asks. “Which do we need for the second half?”

“The core four still have theirs, and Jake is still hanging on to number six as well. Five needs to make its way onto Anna, as well as eight to Libby, nine to Billy, and ten to Margeaux,” Tyler counts off the names. 

“Ah- actually,” Andrej says, “eleven goes to Kiki now, she’s part of the ensemble right before _Brand New Day._ Victor wanted us to mic her up.”

Ondrej swears lowly in Czech. Tyler rolls his eyes, and Andrej slaps him lightly in the back of the head. Alex speaks up again. “So seven and twelve just chill for now?”

“Right you are,” Tyler says. Out of the corner of his eye he spots Margeaux approaching them, in costume. He quickly grabs the roll of facetape and tosses it at Ondrej’s face. “I’ll just grab ten for you, now won’t I?” 

_“You can’t get out of mic’ing up the actors forever,”_ Ondrej mutters in Czech but takes the proffered mic pack anyway.

Everything continues to run suspiciously smoothly. Then, when Kiki’s character falls, shoved by the winged monkeys, the shoe drops. Not that anyone knows immediately, of course. 

Instead, when the ensemble comes off, Kiki amongst them, she moves towards the stagehands, clutching the side of her face. 

“Holy shit, she’s bleeding,” someone says, and Ondrej whips around to see that her lav’s pulled on a piercing in her ear. 

He flinches, but gingerly takes the lav Kiki hands to him. “I’ll just… disinfect this, shall I?” 

He sets about finding a Lysol wipe and scrubs it thoroughly, holding his breath not to see too much red on the wipe. By the time he’s finished another issue’s arisen. As he coils the wire around the pack, putting the lav away, Andrej and Alex are poring over the detailed fake wings attached to the back of the head flying monkey; Billy, his name is. 

Yanni pops out of nowhere and hands Alex a roll of black gaff tape, and Alex tears a piece away. Tyler moved to stand by them. “Your wings broke?” he asks.

It’s a little bit of a rhetorical question, when one of them is dangling precariously and the other is hopelessly tangled in the arm’s pull-strings. Andrej frowns deeply at them. “Why can’t you have the foam wings like the other monkeys?” he gripes, untangling the wing on the left. 

Alex tapes the other back together as unobtrusively as possible, and Yanni mutters something about thank goodness the thin plasticine fabric didn’t tear. Ondrej mirrors the sentiment and hopes this is the last of the show’s issues. 

The production’s metaphorical gaff tape holds together, and when the actors take their final bows, the directors are presented flowers, and the ‘Thank You’ speeches have been made, the show is over without another incident. 

Yanni grins at the stage, still mostly set. “We should celebrate this,” he says.

“Strike always has cake, you know that, right?” Alex tells him.

Yanni’s eyes go wide. _“Really?”_

“And pizza,” Tyler tells him. “There’s gonna be pizza.”

“Strike’s the best,” Yanni declares. 

“No it’s not,” Alex and Tyler say simultaneously.

“Strike has food, yes, but after we eat it’s a lot of work for a long time,” Andrej explains. 

Yanni seems to think it over. He shrugs. “Whatever. I’ll see what happens.”

Halfway through strike, he sits limply on the stage, attempting to unscrew bolts with a crescent wrench to no avail. Yanni feels more than a usual tired— reality’s a little fuzzy and he just needs to wake up— 

“Hey dude!” Ceddy pops up from nowhere, Cally at his back. Dan watches from a distance somewhat bemusedly, the sole supporter of a sixteen-foot-tall black-painted lauan cutout. “You wanna help us destroy the windmill?” 

Yanni stands. “Sure.”

Dan bends the lauan slowly, until it splinters and snaps in two. He hands the wheel on top to Cally and Ceddy helps him hoist the bottom of the legs, and the four of them proceed towards the dumpster. 

Ten minutes later, Yanni and Cally are holding the lauan down while Ceddy smashes an orange rubber mallet through it repeatedly. Dan’s catching all of it on camera. Steven is looking on in horror. 

“You see, Yanni,” Cally calmly informs as the splinters continue to fly, “last year we had a play where some of the props were lauan signs on sticks. We had way too much fun smashing them against the dumpster.”

“Especially Ceddy, so I’ve been told,” Dan chimes in. “I wasn’t there.”

Ceddy pauses in his onslaught, grins maniacally, and takes a heavy swing at the edge before realizing there’s not much solid lauan left to smash up. He frowns. 

Cally plucks the mallet out of his hands. “I think we’re done with that.” He helps Yanni and Dan toss the windmill’s shattered remains into the dumpster, and inspects the mallet closely. “Dude.”

“What?” Ceddy asks.

“You _bent_ it,” Cally says. He points to the mallet head, which is now at a jauntier angle than it was before. “It’s made of _rubber.”_

Ceddy shrugs. 

The actors and technicians begin trickling out as the night wears on, and the freshly clean theater is the only sign anything’s changed. 

Until next time.

**Author's Note:**

> you can't make this up. 
> 
> the entire story is my own experiences in tech, retold with only the tiniest bit of exaggeration! hopefully i'll get around to writing up other productions, but for now, kudos and comments encouraged!


End file.
